I'm back again! I still think these issues tarnish what is otherwise one of the all-time great turn-based combat systems. So here's another idea for fixing them, in case anyone still cares (please care, at least in other games you may be working on *cough cough*):
1) All actions that affect a character in combat now cause the user to enter combat.
2) Characters no longer drop from combat solely because of distance from enemies. (I realize there may be some weird edge cases, so maybe just increase the distance needed to drop from combat without the Escape action by a very large amount, so it would take multiple turns of the fastest possible movement, jumping, etc.)
3) The Escape action now works as follows:
----a. Similar to Delay Turn, once you do anything at all on your turn you can no longer choose to try to Escape that turn.
----b. Once you choose to use your turn to try to Escape, you cannot do anything except move during your turn. (All abilities are disabled, except maybe movement abilities like Tactical Retreat.)
----c. If you move far enough away from enemies after taking the Escape action, you drop from combat.
4) The Escapist talent now [gives you 6 action points / gives a free use of Tactical Retreat / something similar] when you take the Escape action, replacing the talent's previous functionality.
You could also do fun things like change the Guerilla talent to let you Escape if no enemy has line of sight on you (EDIT: if you're in stealth... essentially streamlining what would happen if you left combat and stealthed back into combat... not sure about this idea!). Escaping should be a fun, normal thing to do, instead of a barrel of exploits. Even with these changes, the ability to escape to fully heal and reset all your cooldowns will still be very powerful.
Last edited by pacman7654; 04/01/21 02:01 AM.